1. Field of Art
The disclosure generally relates to displaying reports on a device having a display area that is small relative to the amount of data that is being displayed.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are several ways of using charts or graphs to visually present statistical data available in reports including, for example, bar charts, pie charts, line graphs, and scatter graphs. On a mobile device such as a handheld device, handheld computer, cell phone, tablet computer, or personal digital assistant (PDA), graphs and charts have to be displayed on small display screens with display areas that are limited in size compared to the data being shown. There are several challenges in trying to show graphs and charts on such devices. For example, FIG. 1 illustrates a pie chart and some of the obstacles encountered in displaying a pie chart on a small screen. Each sector 100 (also referred to as a slice) in a pie chart corresponds to a data point that represents a percent of the total formed by all the sectors combined. For example, sector 100 represents a data point with value that is 15% of the aggregate of all sectors and sector 110 represents a data point that is 22% of the aggregate of all sectors. The size of a sector is determined based on the value of the corresponding data point. Different sectors may be distinguished by displaying a label associated with each sector. With a limited display area, it may be difficult to display a label adjacent to each sector. Hence a legend 120 may be displayed that allows a viewer to associate the label with a sector based on some property of the sector such as color or shading. Due to limited display area, only a limited precision of the percent corresponding to each sector may be displayed or there may not be sufficient space to display the percent value. It is difficult for a viewer to visually distinguish between two sectors that are very similar in size. Furthermore, the viewer may be interested in knowing the actual value corresponding to the data point along with the percent value corresponding to the sector. It may be difficult to show all the information associated with the data points corresponding to the sectors of the pie chart on a screen with limited display area. The problem is amplified if the number of sectors in the pie chart is large or if the amount of text to be displayed for the values or the labels is large.